This invention relates to liquid crystalline imaging, and more particularly, to providing an electrohydrodynamic induced texture transformation from the Grandjean to focal-conic texture in liquid crystalline compositions.
Cholesteric liquid crystals are known to exhibit various observable textures. For example, cholesteric liquid crystals may adopt a homeotropic, a focal-conic, or a Grandjean plane texture as modifications of the cholesteric mesophase itself, as described in Gray, G.W., Molecular Structure and the Properties of Liquid Crystals, Acadamic Press, London, 1962, pp. 39-54.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,704,056 to J. J. Wysocki, J. E. Adams and R. W. Madrid discloses that the Grandjean texture of a cholesteric liquid crystalline material can be transformed into the focal-conic texture by application of an electrical field. The electrical field induced texture transformation is indicated therein as also occurring with liquid crystalline compositions comprising a cholesteric liquid crystalline material and a nematic liquid crystalline material.
It is known that the application of a D.C. electrical stimulus can cause a hydrodynamic effect converting an initially clear Grandjean texture to the scattering focal-conic texture.
In new and growing areas of technology such as liquid crystalline imaging, new methods, apparatus, compositions, and articles of manufacture are often discovered for the application of the new technology in a new mode. The present invention relates to a novel method of providing an electrohydrodynamic induced texture transition from the Grandjean to the focal-conic texture.